( }I 1IIIIilii I, I, rl I I I i it ø "' , [ II- 11, rk . A II : ;fÙ/;,t. " "Í I ' J.'; c. 1# ==- I ( (<'fj,. - . ' - -- .... ,..., (. r , à . 1( - __=:.--m- I ..r ('I' Jt!' \ - ( . (__', -_' ,;, '^ ""1' / - ... :-....;. .:- \ .> ....., ,;. \ "" "'I 1 ' " '). '" I / t.\\! \ .f 4 JßPI .t) r I I í +I,I/('f ,ft À ' .tt' I ' , ) /:; / \, , \ ... ' ! \ \ \ \ \r ( , if } (if # , I ' \ 1, , ! \\ 1,(, \. ,,,''\Iii ' Albrecht Ðürer at the Metropolitan Museum 14 AR.T -Cont'd purpose. / Vassilyev's work, which in the past has tended to lack magnetism on first view- ing is shown to best advantage here The paintings have a beautiful sense of light. Scenes executed in a feathered realistic tech- nique are overlaid with geometric shapes that function as doors and windows, creating a nearly mystical relationship Through March 12 (Kind, 136 Greene St ) TOM BUTTER-This sculptor's Fiberglas forms with figurative references have always had a quiet sense of appropriateness. His newest works have more insistent figurative ele- ments, such as a pair of actual work gloves wringing a chain or a wheeled piece of Fiber- glas held in place by a boot and a rope. In pursuing this more narrative approach, But- ter seems to have lost something. Through March 9. (Marcus,S 78 Broadway.) BEAUFORD DELANEY (1901-79)-A retrospective of paintings by an overlooked artist who lived the last twenty-five years of his life in Paris. There is a certain naÏveté to the work, but much of it proves to be quietly intelligent In a large scene of Washington Square from 1951 the artist demonstrates that he has learned the lessons of Cézanne and of the Fauvists, and adds his own Dufyesque, deco- rative delight in street life. A display of eleven canvases from the sixties ranges from pale yellow to tangy lemon and merges Impressionis- tic and Expressionis- tic tendencies. In a n um ber of portraits from the seventies, the artist reveals a humble appreciation of people Through March 30 (Briet. 558 Broadway.) MING FAY-The ulti- ma te walk-in still- life: huge papier- mâché clamshells, wishbones, ginseng roots, mollusks, frui ts, and other as- sorted organic matter arranged on the floor and walls. These pain ted sculptures are sensitively exe- cuted, and they have a fine degree of surface articulation and a pervasive sense of impend- ing decay. Through March 23. (Exit Art, 578 Broadway. ) LOUISE FISHMAN-Highly accomplished dark, dark paintings made with thick paint applied with wide brushes. "Moraine," which is as dark as a painting can get without being black, is calmly unsettling. "Lamentations" has a wide teal band running across its center, a quietly emphatic gesture of con- striction and cancellatlon. Through March 23. (Lennon, Weinberg, 580 Broadway.) FRED WILSON-This ethnographic Good Samari- tan has gathered ancient artifacts (or repro- ductions of them) of the sort revered by Western collectors and museums, and has displayed them with labels that make con- nections to heated political issues For exam- ple, there are shattered Babylonian and Ptol- emaic objects labelled "Recent acquisition from the Baghdad Museum" and African masks with the names of life-threatening infections scratched into their surfaces. There are rain jars from La tin America that emit wailing voices and a case with pre-Columbi- an artifacts displayed beside cocaine para- phernalia. But even with their poetic and poignant references to the war, AIDS, C.LA.- instigated revolutions, and the drug trade, the works lack insight Through March 9 (Gracie Mansion Gallery, 532 Broadway) SHORT LIST-RENÉ PIERRE ALLAIN. Pretto, 54 MacDougal St (through March 23); KENNY SCHARF and LARRY BELL. Shafrazi, 130 Prince St (through March 23); LINDA DANIELS. Fiction- Nonfiction, 21 Mercer St (through March 9); ELIZABETH DWORKIN. Munroe, 130 Prince St (through March 30), DAN FLAVIN. Boone, 417 West Broadway (through March 30); PAUL GEORGES 1 Plumb, 81 Greene St. (through March 16); DAVID REED. Protetch, 560 Broad- way (through March 23); NANCY SPERO and CHRIS BURDEN. Baer, 476 Broome St (through March 9); FRANZ ERHARD WALTHER and SOL LEWITT. Weber, 142 Greene St (through March 23). ,/;:t ,r ( p I "f J, \ , PHOTOGRAPHY I N search of delight, we went to Staley-Wise, at 560 Broadway, where a group of pictures by J. H. Lartigue (1894-1986) is on view until March 16. Many of these photographs are so well known that they're a kind of modest, later equivalent to Seurat's "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande ]atte." Still, Lartigue's photographs are always a wonderful reminder of the sheer joy that taking pictures can be. The images exhibited here range from those Lartigue took when he was a small boy to those he did in his mid-forties. The prints are not vintage, but they're signed, some of them with a scribble that looks like a sun-an apt symbol for the work. The pictures Lartigue took before he was ten years old make a convincing argument for innate talent in photog- ra phy. These are views of privileged ----- --i lives, the flip side of the social portraits : l ss .e w been so im portan t to our understand- ing of the impact industry had on life at the turn of the '^ \ ts L r; : enced the giddy thrill of speed in a car or a plane- and through these pictures we wit- ness the optimism that progress once stood for. --z...- -r., ,/ z -" BRUCE CHARLESWORTH-Lately, it seems as if Hollywood has become the favorite source of inspiration for photography, replacing that old perennial, nature This show, titled "Man and Nature," presents Orwellian-setup pho- tographs, often of people in scary situations, that bring to mind David Lynch and Stephen King. Although Charlesworth's wit and ver- satility have always been impressive, here his combination of horror and humor feels thin. Through March 16 (Baum, 588 Broadway.) MARTIN PARR-A good-sized group of photo- graphs that displays the artist's talent for capturing faces at giveaway moments-the times when expressions betray all you need to know. He's especially good with stiff upper lips, boredom, and locked jaws. He's also witty on the subject of photography itself. In one picture, a couple of tourists have arrived at a "view." The man has stepped out of the car that one presumes brought them there, and he is in the process of photographing a mountain topped with clouds. Meanwhile, his female companion sits in the car, reading what looks like a good gossip rag. One of its headlines declares, "GOLDILOCKS LOSES THE BORE WAR" Another reads, "SO SWEET THEY MAKE ME SICK." So much for lovely scenery Through March 23. (Bor- den, 560 Broadway.) SHORT LIST-SARAH CHARLESWORTH. Gorney, 100 Greene St. (through March 30); LOIS CONNER and VAL TELBERG. Laurence Miller, 138 Spring St (through March 16); PETER HUJAR. Danzig- er, 415 West Broadway (through March 30); GRACE KNOWLTON. Witkin, 415 West Broadway (opens at noon on Saturdays, through April 6); LISETTE MODEL. International Center of Pho- tography, 1130 Fifth Ave., at 94th St. (open Tuesdays, noon to 8, with no admission charge after 5; Wednesdays through Fridays, noon to 5; Saturdays and Sundays, 11 to 6; through March 24); LUCAS SAMARAS. Pace- MacGill, 32 E. 57th St. (through March 30); AARON SISKIND. Sikkema, 155 Spring St. (opens at noon on Saturdays, through March 16). MUSIC T HE original-instrument compo- nen t of Lincoln Center's Mozart celebration comes into view March 10 with the arrival from the American West of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, led by Nicholas McGegan and with Lowell Greer as the horn soloist. We particularly like hearing Mozart's horn concerti in early-music- revival style. The melodic lines vouch- safed the soloists are quite bare, not to say primitive, and we find it easier to enjoy them when we know that the player is stretching the capacities of a tricky instrument, rather than gliding through on a valve horn, which, our ears keep reminding us, could do so much more. In addition, Mr. Greer livens things up a bit now and then with ornaments and cadenzas that "mainstream" players are still, for the most part, too shy to venture. And, finally, we agree with Brahms that the old valveless horns had a certain pure beauty that it would be sad to do without. (Mr. Greer and Mr. McGegan have recorded all the con- certi on Harmonia Mundi HMU 907012.) Every generation has to rescue Mo- zart from the previous generation's ways of hearing him. Early in this century, the "Dresden-china figurine" image of the composer had to be re- placed by something meatier and more formidable; for two decades now it has seemed urgent to supplant the syrupy "Viennese chocolate" Mozart, who is supposed to have existed under Bruno Walter and other Central Eu- ropeans, with something athletic and classical. Soon it will be time to decry the "low calorie" Mozart of Mr. McGegan and his colleagues. There is something behind these descriptions, but in the end, of course, they are specious. One quick way to assure oneself of that is to try some of the "historic" Mozart that has been coming out in floods on compact-disk releases We have been especially enthralled with the series on EMI- Angel, whose rich catalogue guaran- tees the company more or less per- manent preeminence in the sphere of historical reissues. We have been lis- tening to radiant singing by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and to inspired, dramat- ic piano playing by Artur Schnabel and Edwin Fischer. As for Dennis Brain with Herbert von Karajan on the same series, the above remarks about instruments in the horn concer- ti seem hopelessly beside the point. Viennese chocolates, indeed! Their styles are far from what we know today, but the idea of a given style's inherent suitability for a composer loses force in proportion to the com- poser's imagination. On the EMI re- cordings, we hear grea t musicians fully engaged with a composer they eviden tly revere; the notion of their style not suiting Mozart speaks more to the limitations of suiting than to those of style. If we're lucky, in forty years' time we will feel like saying the same of Mr McGegan and his band.